The winners of the Northern Lights photography competition capture the magic and mystery of the Aurora Borealis — If If you happen to feel a great disturbance in the magnetosphere, it might be because some charged particles from the sun are bopping around in there. And as freaky as that sounds, it’s actually no cause for alarm (as far as I know?). What it is the cause of…

Even the greatest works of art look even better with a nice Australian Shepherd — Finnegan “Finn” Reinhardt is a Texas-based Australian Shepherd dog who has spent the last year brilliantly recreating famous works of art with his best friend and roommate Eliza. Eliza’s keen artistic eye, sense of humor, and skills as a painter are a perfect complement to Finn’s years of practice at…

On depression and sunshine — Editor’s note: I’m the editor and founder of Tenderly, Summer Anne Burton. If you’re a regular reader, you may have noticed that we haven’t been publishing as often as usual lately. Mostly, that’s been because of my personal problems, some of which I talk about here, and some of which…

And some pigeons. Honestly, if you’re a bird, you can audition to be this nice dog’s best friend. — Vendetta and Lemony are quite close. They share a lot of the same interests, after all, like rainy days, getting lost in the woods, and long walks in nature. But it would be a dramatic failure of journalism to report these facts without also noting that Vendetta is a German…

In Germany, rescued cows are finally getting the respect they deserve — and now they’re movie stars, too — Jan Gerdes was a third-generation dairy farmer. He took pride in his work, for a while. But then he started to feel torn, about the work that for so long felt perfectly normal, then began to feel the opposite. He was burnt out, and in 2002 Gerdes decided to sell…

The winners of the most recent Ocean Photography Awards are utterly mesmerizing — Vast, inaccessible, and astonishingly beautiful, the ocean can often feel like an alien place, full of danger and enchantment in equal parts. This makes the achievements of photographers who are able to shine a light on this part of our world all the more impressive, as they draw attention to…

They’re the closest thing to a dog in the cat world — Three years ago, I had the difficult task of persuading my now-husband to get a cat. He was adamantly a dog person — he liked cats, but he was convinced they were inferior to dogs as house pets. Now, he loves both our cats with his whole heart, but when…

Kiko is happy to be in your photo as long as it is clearly *about* her — Kiko is a 10-month-old Finnish Spitz puppy who insists on doing things her own way—especially when it comes to posing for her person’s Instagram photos. She lives with her sister Tofu and a wise, patient, and long-suffering White Swiss Shepherd named Kaya who acts as the mother of the group.

From beloved pets to wild creatures, a series of stunning photos of the amazing animals we share our world with — Earlier this year, the photography app Agora challenged photographers to submit photos of living creatures from around the world for a contest focused on celebrating the diverse and precious life on our planet. More than 13,000 photos were submitted to the contest before the…